You can now purchase Apple's Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, on a flash drive for $69 – and, yes, it's the exact same operating system that's available at the online Mac Store for $29.99.
The USB thumb drive is available through Apple's online store, where Apple explains that the $69 lets you install the company's new OS without a …

Nothing of the sort

You have all been abused by the brick and mortar so long you don't understand the cost of physical distribution anymore. The big players artificially hike up digital distribution but Apple is trying to changing all of that. Do you realize the markup most software has at BestBuy, and other distributors? Apple is selling Lion digitally for far less because it make sense to! If you assume $29 is wholesale price for the software alone and say $10 for the flash drive you are looking at a retail markup of about 60%, which is high but not so crazy.

Note: I just saw the "OEM" price for Windows 7 Pro at $35. Boxed Retail price is $299 but nobody is getting all crazy about the over priced DVD and cardboard box Microsoft ships!

Not true

Anyone can be an OEM. Last time I checked you get this from Newegg as long as you bought some new hardware along with it. Literally a $.99 bag of screws qualified.

Even if you don't want to game M$ (and really doesn't even M$ fans want to stick it to them?), you can still make this a very legit OEM purchase by buying a new HD or Video card, or adding some memory to your PC, any of which can be a reasonable upgrade to consider when upgrading to a new OS.

The OP obviously doesn't know the difference between a Retail box which can be reinstalled as and when you change hardware or upgrade..... and OEM.... Should really educate yourself in such basic matters before speaking out or your rear end.

What are you on ?

It's illegal to put a disk image you paid for and downloaded on to a USB drive you bought ?!?

When did this happen ?

Copying an installer disc and selling it or giving it to friends is illegal but buying your own disc and copying it to a USB drive is not, it's the same fair use principle that allows you to copy CDs to your iPod.

The funny thing is it's incredibly easy to make a USB installer with a Mac (using Disk Utility) thanks to Intel's EFI, Mac fans really don't have a clue.

Copying CDs is still illegal in the UK

David, you need to clarify

I guess you are living in the US?

IANAL but I think that in the UK, it is indeed unlawful to copy a CD onto your iPod. There is no "Fair use". I think that the law allows for "copies" that are necessarily made to use an item (such as the vibrations of a gramophone needle that are "copies" of the track), but that doesn't extend to format shifting.

Also some wily lawyer apparently suggested that the "copying" of data from a disk into RAM to do something with it requires a license to copy (even though you might think that it is a necessary copying operation to use what you've bought).

Actually we do!

It is the Windows wonks trying to find something where nothing exists. Apple wants to encourage digital distribution because it is cheaper, so they pass along the costs associated with physical distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive is an 8 GB drive and the OS is $29. Figure $20 for the drive and we are talking about a retail markup of $20 which sounds about right.

I mentioned it before but Windows 7 retail is $299 but OEM distribution is $35. So lets talk about an expensive disk/cardboard Box!

Apple encourages people to make their own flash drive for catastrophic disk failure. Apple is not imposing this on anyone. Just making it available as an option for those who want/need it.

Oh FFS

I could almost accept the "no physical product" sales pitch, but to whack it onto a (presumably hard coded, non-reusable) USB key instead of just pressing a DVD is just lunacy, even without the $40 overhead. Even from an environmental viewpoint, surely DVD is better??

Why not a DVD?

Well, if you're upgrading your macbook air then that will be $29+x for the DVD, plus another $70 for a superdrive if you haven't bought one already. While I'm sure most people probably HAVE done just that, or have a second machine that they are using disc sharing with, it's still a series of extra steps you need to perform.

However, it's obvious that Apple is trying to do away with DVD media in the same way as it did with floppy drives. Whether that's good or bad is debatable, but it's clear that's what they're trying to do.

Not to mention you get a darling little apple branded usb key that you can wear for a pendant. I can't wait for data-enabled tattoos, that we just wave above our computers to install the software. I know where I'd stick my tattoo, how about you? :D

you presume incorrectly

"presumably hard coded, non-reusable" would be a bad guess on your part. Just as with the downloadable version, you can use this one as many times as you wish. (You do have to remember to copy the downloadable version to another volume before using it, as if you leave it where it was downloaded it will delete itself upon finishing the update. However, if you copy it to, say, a USB drive, you can use it as many times as you want to.)

What you can't do with the downloadable version is install over Leopard. (Well, not without indulging in some gymnastics, anyway) Apparently you can do that with the USB-from-Apple version. As Snow Leopard costs $30, if you have Leopard and want to go to Lion (why you'd want to do that is beyond me, frankly) you'd have to either buy Snow Leopard first and then get Lion, at a total cost of $60 plus the time required to do _two_ updates. This way you spend $70, but only do _one_ update. $10 seems little enough to pay to avoid the hassle.

ever hear of 16x drive

I have one in my PC that is like 3 years old, burns a full DVD in a few minutes

Surely you are aware that DVD on SATA can transfer at a minimum 15-30MB/s

Sure seek times aren't great, but you shouldn't be booting and running from the DVD, you just use it to install.

And I still find it funny the Appull fanbois trying to defend why its good that handjobs is removing legacy features to save a few pennies. "Oh who needs DVDs, its not like there movies or something you can still use them for....." sheesh

Even if you ripped all your movies to a multi-TB drive (which asspull, I mean apple would charge like $4000 for BTW) DVD are still very usefull to transfer data from one PC to another.

I can burn 4GB of pic or vids and share them with friends or family without having to ask for my flash drive back. (and they cost like $.10 a piece now)

Takes care of all users.

DVD may no be dead, but....

I'm not saying DVD's are useless but with external drives and Flash Drives so cheap (and so much more reliable) I'd never wast my time with one anymore unless I had to leave something behind. I think most people feel the same way.

Oh, and I have a 2TB drive with my videos that I'll upgrade to 6TB for about $240, although I did consider only going to 4TB and keeping it down to about half that.

and you _still_ presume incorrectly

You can reuse the drive if you so desire. Why you'd want to is up to you, but one of the advantages that a thumb drive has over a DVD (or a download) is that you can take it to the local Apple dealer and have said dealer update it to the latest version of the OS. Or you could download the updater yourself and put it onto the drive, as there's plenty of space left over.

And as for the system requirements... that's because the download version requires the MAS, which became available with 10.6.6. There are three Apple Stores in my vicinity, and the staff there are pushing the USB drives as a way to upgrade from Leopard, without going to Snow Leopard first.

title

You certainly do

Thats probably why it costs so much, that sort of innovative design costs a lot to develop and until someone sells a similar looking one to start a legal process against the only way to make money is to sell stuff.

recovery disk assistent

well, in all fairness, Apple also provides a free download to create your own recovery thumb drive. (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433)

You can even use it and a time machine backup to go back to 10.6.8, which, after a good week, is what I did. Lion was supposed to be conjured up specifically for my 11" MacBook Air, but all it did was to require more clicks to achieve the same thing as before and throw up more fancy transitions.

Recovery

But I thought all the recovery assistant did was boot enough of the system to re-download the thing again (Hopefully not the same month that the first Lion download used my entire month's bandwidth allowance!)

A better option for me was to burn a copy of the installer after downloading it.

So. What.

Oh please…

I'd made my own by the time Lion was even released and Apple has since provided a free download to help non-geeks make one. Combine that with the fact that the OS costs thirty bucks and only a bitter old woman would complain, in between kicking cats and screaming at the neighbor kids to get off her lawn.

There's a point at which your insistence on perpetual pique distorts the truth and become truly bad journalism. When was the last time you got laid?